Manure

Manure
Methodology

Explore Data

Why Manure?

Livestock manure is the foundational feedstock for the biogas sector. While it has a lower energy density compared to food waste, it provides the critical consistent volume needed to stabilize anaerobic digesters year-round.

This dataset covers the four primary sectors driving this supply:

Dairy

Dairy

Beef

Beef

Chicken

Chicken

Hog

Hog

The Methodology

Animal count and census boundary

Collected livestock numbers from the 2021 Census of Agriculture for each CCS in Ontario.

Satellite image Remote sensing of barn locations

Identified individual barn structures across the province using high-resolution imagery.

Barns location

Located barns based on visual identification, guided by farm registry data, and validated with Google Street View when needed.

Animal allocation to barns

Distributed animals from the census proportionally to barns based on footprint and species composition.

Gridded dataset with manure, P and N

Mapped manure, nitrogen, and phosphorus for each barn using livestock counts and species-specific rates, then mapped the results to a 30 m grid.